Time to put politics aside
and fight climate change

With the recent horrific fires in Butte County, many of us are becoming increasingly alarmed about climate change. When I saw my preschool-aged children in their face masks, I was struck with the realization that this is their future. When my son asks, “Mama, when can we see a polar bear?” the despair I feel for him is like a rock in my stomach.

But there is hope. Historic climate legislation was introduced recently that will put a price on carbon emissions. The Climate Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act was introduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. members of Congress — Reps. Francis Rooney, Brian Fitzpatrick, Ted Deutch, Charlie Crist and John Delaney.

This legislation, if passed, would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 33 percent over the next 10 years. This kind of emissions reduction is critical if we hope to stave off the most frightening effects of global warming.

As a member of the House of Representatives’ Safe Climate Caucus, our representative, Jared Huffman, is already working to fight climate change, and I urge him to do whatever is in his power to support this bill. It’s time to put aside partisan politics and move forward with solutions to give a safe future to our children.

— Betsy Kelly, Fairfax

Maybe Miller ‘outfoxed’
Southern sympathizers

Here’s a theory that plausibly links and reconciles the two seemingly disparate stories about how the Dixie School District got its name.

James Miller, reportedly a Union sympathizer, may have accepted the dare from the Southern sympathizers building his schoolhouse, to name it Dixie, then later said that he had actually named it after his Miwok acquaintance in Murphys, Mary Dixie.
Under this theory, the name Dixie memorializes not the old South, but rather how the canny Miller outfoxed Southern sympathizers.

— James Holmes, Larkspur

Cats proliferate while
birds continue to vanish

In 2017, Friends of Ferals (FOF) founder Janet Williams tried to sell feral cats as “nature’s way” of controlling rodents. Several months later she back-tracked, saying that only when not fed by humans do ferals “resort to killing birds and rodents.”

In 2016, she spoke enthusiastically of Marin’s “thousands” of feral cats, particularly those “born in the wild, without human contact” who nevertheless must be fed by humans because “well fed cats are better hunters.” Exactly how many “feeding stations” exist in Marin?

Well fed cats kill billions of native birds. These are not difficult data to collect, and many scrupulous, peer-reviewed scientists have done so. The numbers correlate with an infinity of citizen scientist observations of backyard birds collected over decades.

FOF deserves respect for sincerely wanting to help stray cats, but they also deserve rebuke for propagating wildly self-contradictory and disingenuous statements. By giving “Tails of Marin” newspaper space to FOF, Marin Humane is as responsible for this specious propaganda.

In a 2016 IJ article discussing our “thousands” of ferals, Marin Humane carefully used the word “maintain” rather than “reduce” or “eliminate.” They know the false promise of Trap-Neuter-Release.

Old paradigms don’t shift easily. Humanity possesses ancient archetypal relationships with both cats and birds. Like many, I feel distressed and yes, outraged by our humane society’s casual, careless indifference to our vital relationship with birds. There is a vast overpopulation of cats on Earth, while birds continue vanishing. This really is insanity.

— Leslie Stewart, San Rafael

PG&E could do more to be
‘our good neighbors’

Sheryl Longman writes (Readers’ Forum, Nov. 28) that we ratepayers ought to “help the company cope with this complex situation.”
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is a private corporation, and must make decisions in line with the wishes of its stockholders. Consider the incessant PG&E puff-pieces on television, Ms. Longman — wouldn’t that money have been better spent mitigating the problem of trees impacting their power lines? Our good neighbors, indeed.

It is also curious that so many seem to have forgotten this outfit went bankrupt during the Enron debacle, and California had to bail them out then, too.